Sunday, 14 February 2010

It's time for the Tokiwadai school's Midsummer Festival, which means.... well, it means yet another filler episode from To Aru Kagaku no Railgun basically. Sorry everyone.

This particular festival basically doubles as an open day for the school, allowing anyone invited to come and take a look around the premises and see all the incredible things that the girls there have learned during their time at the school - No, not teleportation and generating electricity, but flower arranging and cross-stitching. Needless to say Uihara and Saten both get invites to the event, with the former more than a little excited to get to look around the school of her dreams, while many of the other usual characters also crop up in some shape or form, including both Touma and Index to continue their run of occasional cameos.

As the episode progresses, so it's revealed that Mikoto Misaka will be giving a performance on stage as part of the event, and as the excitement builds all around the school so Misaka finds herself suffering rather from performance anxiety - Although to be honest I'd have thought she'd find a violin recital as little more than a trifle compared to having to dress as a maid for most of the day. Oh, I didn't mention that all of the students had to dress as maids for no particular reason, did I? I guess I've just stumbled across the entire point of this episode then...

As time goes on and the episodes drift by, I'm seriously starting to wonder why To Aru Kagaku no Railgun was made into a twenty-four episode series at all - We've been regaled with so much filler material now that surely all of the major story arcs could have been condensed into a shorter, and thus more interesting series. Yes, it does appear that there's something more important on the horizon to explain all of those minor earthquakes in recent episodes, but that doesn't really make up for the fact that the second half of this series so far has been a bit of a waste of time. I'll openly admit that there were a few funny moments sprinkled throughout this episode, but even that isn't really enough for me to give it a free pass when I think back to how much better the first half of the show was, even when it drifted towards filler itself. Here's to hoping that things pick up quickly before the series simply runs out of time and episodes.

1 comment:

I'd complain too, because I enjoyed the first arc, but I could happily watch another twelve or so easygoing filler episodes like this one - it has a sort of Railgun:Hoshimittsu feeling to it. I mean, doesn't Mikoto look great in her white dress? And what about Kuroko's tearstreaked face in the audience? Waaaa -